A VISION FOR 2020: OTHER WORLDS ARE POSSIBLE
On November 8, 2016, I was at a friend's 30th birthday party, in a room full of activists and policy wonks dressed in our finest post-apocalyptic attire. The apocalyptic theme was almost a joke, and definitely a way to express our internal fears externally. If Trump won that night, it would be the end of the world.
Multiple projectors were set up around the room, and between drinks and sweaty dances, we studied the election returns. Throughout the night the drinks flowed more freely, and the music all but stopped. We sat stunned and the party ended early. I went home and sobbed myself to sleep and woke up to find Facebook posts and tweets confirming that most of my friends had done the same.
My roommate at the time, a small Black transgender man, was afraid to go downtown to the law firm where he worked the next morning. Leadership at Daily Kos gave staff time and space to both grieve and process. Soon, our fear turned to action, and I worried about how long fear could sustain a movement.
We are early in the next presidential election cycle, and already many people want to give fear the keys to the car. Many of us are boxing in vivid visions about what may be possible. The conversations about electability have already begun. The wars waged on social media against people of color—and particularly women of color—who dare offer pointed criticism of any candidates in the ever-growing Democratic field, suggest that their selectiveness is what will get Trump re-elected. Already, despite the incredibly talented, qualified, and prepared women and POC candidates, Biden (the veteran), Bernie (the "outsider"), and Buttigieg (the "new guy") have taken turns being pushed to the front of the line despite women and POC voters' collective “Hell, no.”
A funny thing about electability is that even in the most liberal imaginations, only an upper-middle-class white man can beat Trump, because only that man can chip away at Trump's support. With a year-and-a-half until the general election, I've already begun to feel fatigue. When I got to the She the People presidential forum last month, I felt once again what it was like to have a body politic grounded in hope and vision, rather than fear and resignation.
I believe all organizing is science fiction. Trying to create a world that we’ve never experienced and never seen is a science-fictional activity. And, to get to a world where there is no rape, no homelessness, no inequality, is going to require a good amount of future casting and future thinking, aligning ourselves into the future, exploring and playing with how we’re going to get there.
--adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism
Many great innovations come from the margins of society, though there is great disparity in who gets recognized as innovative. The genius catalog of science fiction author Octavia Butler exists because she didn't see herself in the science fiction she eagerly devoured as a little Black girl. So she wrote it herself.
Women of color are ready for innovations in political campaigning and governing in 2020. Tired of not seeing ourselves reflected in the laws we abide by, the platforms the Democratic Party develops, or the policy priorities of most of our politicians, women of color are doing the great science fiction work of crafting a world that does more than pay lip service to us as messianic voters and reliable workhorses, and instead embraces our wisdom and follows our leadership.
The role that Black women in particular have played in winning campaigns has been ignored or a dirty little secret that folks have not wanted to acknowledge. And so we're saying don't thank us, right? Because that was the narrative that emerged after the Roy Moore race in Alabama. Don't thank us. Acknowledge our leadership, be upfront about our contributions, pay us. Don't try to undermine us and undermine our work, and acknowledge the strategy is winning and act accordingly.
--Nse Ufot, Executive Director, New Georgia Project
Aimee Allison founded She the People as a science-fictional activity. She was writing She the People, a book about the integral role of women of color in politics and political discourse that no one else had written yet. After her publisher went out of business and her book was shelved, she decided that instead of shopping a new book, she would just do the hands-on, on-the-ground work of elevating women of color in political leadership, and founded She the People.
Allison kept looking into the future and asked herself, "What is the biggest, boldest, bomb move that I could do on behalf of women of color?" Her answer was to hold a presidential forum, in the South, in swing states, and to have candidates prove themselves serious contenders by how well they could meet the needs and curiosities of women of color, women of vision who very well could sway their states.
According to Allison, with just two and-a-half months to go before the forum, she didn't have any confirmed candidates. But she held fast to her vision of a space where women of color were the drivers of the conversation. She built it, and the candidates came.
Candidates were not allowed to give any run-of-the-mill stump speeches, either. They were forced to meet women of vision with vision. It was insufficient to say a policy would benefit everyone and therefore benefit women of color. Each candidate was pushed to be specific in their projected outcomes and how they intended to arrive there. It is not enough to be better than the worst option. We are looking for a candidate who can see past the current obstructionist theatrics in Washington, and into a future where the many are just as (if not more) empowered than the wealthy, mostly white, mostly male few.
We're going to hold every single candidate regardless of gender, race accountable for creating a vision that Black women and women of color can see themselves in...But we're really engaging folks on what is the vision that we have in our community to reimagine a kind of America that is more just and more inclusive.
--LaTosha Brown, Founder, Black Voters Matter Fund
After Trump's election, it felt like the political left and the grassroots were constantly up against the ropes. It still feels like that most days. But the women of color at She the People weren't looking toward 2020 as a people on the defense. Instead, they talked about proactive, offensive politicking and organizing.
Every single woman I talked to at the She the People forum was excited about how the 2020 election presents an opportunity to build community power, to engage people who have traditionally opted out of the electoral process, and to lead with inspiration and ideals instead of fear. They spoke with anticipation about how to grow the electorate rather than bend to the prejudices and biases of the electorate as we currently know it, limiting our options before we really begin.
Alia Salem (FACE, Facing Abuse in Community Environments) shared her vision for a world in which little girls can see themselves in Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, whether they are Muslims or not, because their sheer power is an example girls will want to follow. Andrea Zuniga (PL+US, Paid Leave in the U.S.) spoke of a future in which all families have all the resources and freedom they need to properly care for each other when people fall ill. She challenged family values candidates and voters to widen their understanding of family to include queer families, chosen families, friend families, and more. Maria Urbina (Indivisible) cast a vision for a future in which we joyfully lean into the leaders who inspire us, and where that inspiration is inherently electable.
SHE THE PEOPLE, IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION
On April 24, 2019, more than 1,700 women of color from 28 states gathered in Houston, Texas, for the She the People Presidential forum. Eight Democratic presidential hopefuls (Sen. Cory Booker, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren) had the opportunity to speak to Black, brown, and indigenous women about their campaigns and policies, and to make the case for how electing them would improve the material conditions of women of color in the United States.
An astonishing 94% of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, proving themselves once again the most reliable, consistent Democratic voting bloc. Since then, much has been said in political news and media outlets about the voting power of Black women and other women of color. But She the People goes far beyond acknowledging voting habits. It is a national network elevating the political voice and power of women of color as leaders, political strategists, organizers, and yes, as voters.
While Black women in particular have been heralded in recent years as saviors of a country filled with people determined to vote against their best interests, this is a narrative that limits Black women to caretakers and workers, and not the leaders whose instincts, strategies, plans, and policies we should be following.
The She the People presidential forum upended that. This forum centered women of color as experts in our political arena, as people with their fingers on the pulse of political trends, and as leaders poised to make the changes necessary for us all to move toward freedom and away from the slide into fascism we're facing. It was a space that demanded that anyone who intends to be our president be able to speak adeptly about the issues that impact us specifically, and create policies to address those specific issues.
THE KEY TO WINNING IN 2020 IS TO CENTER WOMEN OF COLOR
I already hear the voices of some well-meaning liberals wondering why it's important to focus on women of color, because whoever we elect will be the president for us all.
One of the ugly facts about the 2020 election is that white men are a small minority of people who vote Democrat but have wildly disproportionate control of the money and media and look to have undue influence over the current race for the nomination, which is just one of the many fun ways that one person one vote isn’t really what we have.
In 2016 white men were approximately 34 percent of the electorate, but about 11 percent of the Democratic votes, because more than two thirds of them voted for Trump or third-party candidates. Black voters were also about 11 percent of the Democratic vote total (and Black women voted 94 percent Democratic, the highest total of any major social group). Black and Latina women alone constitute a proportion of the Democratic electorate comparable to white men. So in a completely egalitarian system, what Black voters or nonwhite women want in a Democratic candidate should matter at least as much as white men.
--Rebecca Solnit, Unconscious Bias is Running for President
Women, people of color, and women of color are often asked to collapse all the things that matter to us into some bigger, broader platform that allegedly benefits us all, despite consistently being the voters the Democratic Party can count on. Our concerns are sidelined as special interests instead of rightly placed at the very center of the debate, while our leaders water down our ideals in order to chase down voters who, statistically, are not on our side. It's not only a bizarre strategy (and a racist and sexist one), it's a losing one.
Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been lauded as a political revolutionary, has fallen into the groove of demanding that Black, brown, and indigenous voters support policies with insufficient racial analysis, and hope for a sort of progressive trickle-down effect. This is one of the main reasons Sanders has struggled to connect with audiences of color, and he did so again at the She the People presidential forum. He dodged direct questions about white supremacist violence, finger wagged an audience of 1,700 women of color, and could not recover from pushback and heckling, despite the moderators offering several opportunities.
Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign captured the hearts and minds of progressives all over the country because it was big and bold where Democrats are usually meek and moderate as they try to keep slightly left-of-center voters in the fold. Sanders dared to campaign on ideas like Medicare for All, free college tuition, a livable ($15 minimum) wage for all, and taking Wall Street to task for how its excesses are harming the rest of the nation. But he frequently stopped short of an in-depth racial justice analysis, instead pivoting to an income inequality framework and suggesting that income parity was enough to combat institutional racism.
In 2019, Bernie Sanders' big imagination still shrinks when it comes to issues of particular concern to Black communities and instead of expanding his vision, his campaign has asked again and again for us to shrink ours and fold ourselves into policies for everyone, as though policies meant for everyone haven't always excluded communities of color anyway.
Sanders isn't nearly alone in this tension. There is a fundamental fear on the left that proclaiming support too loudly for policies and laws that specifically redress harm against communities of color will lose them the (white, working-class) support they need to win. This fear, of course, forgets that there are literally MILLIONS of people of color who opt out of electoral politics because they feel like afterthoughts in the political discourse.
This is why the She the People presidential forum represented an important, intentional revolution on the path to the 2020 election.
MUCH MORE THAN A SEAT AT THE TABLE
Shirley Chisholm [said] "If there's not a seat at the table, bring a folding chair." I believe the 21st century model of that is that Black women are demanding our return on our voting investment, and the form that comes in is powerful policies that are centered around our issues, and for us to demand and claim our seats at the decision making tables.
--Glynda C. Carr, Co-founder, Higher Heights
Here is what is evident: The Democratic Party cannot claim to be the party of diversity and equity if it asks women of color to work, volunteer, donate, vote, and turn out voters, all while telling us our concerns rank low on the priority list, below the fabled white working-class voter, the Rust Belt, or anyone else who has not been nearly as consistent as women of color have been. The party will find itself in dead-heat races with, and even losing to, incompetent, openly racist trolls like Donald Trump if it continues to demand fealty from women of color without paying a return on their investment.
Dedicating media and money to uplifting white male candidates who fail to energize women of color—and then hoping those same women will swoop in to save the day—is insulting. Inviting women of color to decision-making tables after the major decisions have already been made is insulting. Assuming the seat of power is at your table and not the table of countless leaders who are women of color is insulting.
The She the People presidential forum was held at Granville C. Sawyer auditorium at Texas Southern University, a geographical choice which makes clear the forum’s intent to engage, uplift, and center Black, brown, and indigenous women.
Texas Southern is a historically Black college in the deep South. Historically Black colleges and universities carry both the legacies of Black cultural pride and white supremacy. Reconstruction- and Jim Crow-era Black Americans could not gain entry into existing universities due to individual and institutional racism. HBCUs were created to fill the gap. HBCUs are important educational institutions, but they are also the site of a great deal of Black cultural production and a deep source of pride.
Texas Southern is also in Barbara Jordan's district. Barbara Jordan was the first Black American to be elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, and the first Southern Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the first Black woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, and She the People brought a groundbreaking presidential forum centered on women of color to her back yard.
We believe that the road to the White House has to stop at a Black woman's house. And for me, that candidate needs to come in and have a cup of tea. So today, 1,700 women of color have come to Houston with our cups of tea to have a serious conversation about the issues we care about.
-- Glynda C. Carr
As a queer Black woman from the South, the forum's location had huge personal significance for me. I am an HBCU graduate. While I have tremendous pride in my alma mater and big love for HBCUs in general, our institutions are often seen as inferior institutions—sometimes even by other Black folks—because they were created for and run by Black people. I am a Southerner by birth, and I fight constantly against liberal notions of the South as a wasteland civilized voters should just leave behind, despite having some of the heaviest concentrations of people of color in the country. I am a Black woman in politics, and I recognize every day that I stand on the shoulders of elders and ancestors like Barbara Jordan, who blazed the trails that allow me to be really opinionated in public without (much) fear of reprisal or death.
Even though it was my first time on that campus, it felt like home. I was there to hear eight people from all over the country, from eight different backgrounds, from eight different sets of experiences that brought them to TSU, all hoping to justify themselves before a crowd of people who looked like me, in a space that didn't welcome me or accommodate me as an afterthought, but was created for people like me. This was one space where I wasn't studying the codes and adjusting myself accordingly, but where people who want the highest seat of power in this country were studying my codes and trying to act accordingly, and with authenticity.
Just that small shift of power was genius. If progressives want to transform our democracy and wrestle control from right-wing demagogues who are clawing and clinging to their positions, we will need to learn to tip power more often toward those that society marginalizes. We will have to recognize both the gifts and genius that women of color are bringing to our fights. We will have to open our hearts and minds to bold visions, and challenge our notions of what is possible and who is electable.
Aimee Allison and She the People will give us many more opportunities to learn from and be transformed by the wisdom of politically active, civically engaged, community-focused women of color. The next event on their calendar is the first Swing State Town Hall, scheduled for May 18, 2019 in Richmond, Virginia, at Virginia Union University.